


Gone Are The Days

by miramei



Series: The Intricacies of Time [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other tags as necessary, Snake Pit - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 11:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13588812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miramei/pseuds/miramei
Summary: They weren't lying when they said that your school days are the best days of your life. A collection of stories about finding friends, growing up, and remembering the fonder parts of childhood.





	Gone Are The Days

_You won't find stronger bonds than you will in team sports._

* * *

 

The Black family as a whole was not big on Quidditch. Mother of course had the least amount of interest in it—it was simply too much trouble, between the gloves and the parasol and the rowdiness that accompanied going to matches. Father, never a sportsman himself, had marginally more interest, and could sometimes be found listening along to a commentated match on the wireless whenever the Appleby Arrows were playing, sometimes clicking his tongue and shaking his head along as he read the evening paper. Only Uncle Alphard enjoyed Quidditch enough to take Sirius and Regulus out to games, and though Mother and Aunt Druella frowned mercilessly, growing up both boys had had a string of toy brooms that they zipped around in the backyard, clipping dangerously close to the hydrangeas.

By the time Sirius started his second year, Mother’s outrage and Father’s disappointment at his sorting had dulled down to a potent simmer. Ultimately, though, they had just regarded Sirius with some sort of dismayed exasperation. Regulus hears snatches of placating words sometimes when he walks past the partially shut sitting room door in the evenings: the soft click of Mother’s knitting needles, the rustle of pages from Father’s book, the hum of the wireless in the background, and Father’s rueful “Well he wouldn’t be a Black if he didn’t do _some_ sort of hair-brained scheme in his young life.”

But there’s only so much that Father is willing to let slide, and he likens Sirius to a dog in this respect. Too much pent up energy means that he releases it in unhealthy and reputation-damaging ways, which Father absolutely will not stand. So despite Mother’s thin-lipped disapproval, he buys Sirius a state-of-the-art broom on his twelfth birthday and tells him to make himself useful and try out for the Quidditch team. Clearly, their parents must have seen some sort of improvement in Sirius’s behavior after he cloaks himself in the red of Gryffindor’s Quidditch kit and takes to the Beater’s post, because come Regulus’s second year, he too gets a broom. When Father takes him out to Diagon Alley on a long weekend Regulus allows himself to dream ahead to where he’s passed the Slytherin tryouts with flying colors. He entertains the idea of being Chaser, maybe, so that he can wipe that smarmy look off of Potter’s face when he gets in more goals. But as they’re browsing broom accessories—polishes and stabilizers and grip adjustments and foot rests—he takes a good hard look at his reflection in the shop’s window.

Sirius is the one that takes after their mother. He’s got her eyebrows and her nose and the well-defined jaw. He’s got her stockier build and her sharper temper. Regulus, on the other hand, has their father’s slim build and high cheekbones. He will most likely grow to have his father’s strength, coiled muscle on a lithe frame, never as obviously powerful-looking as Sirius will ever be. Not a bad frame for a Chaser, really, so long as he worked on his upper body strength. It would be acceptable.

But no, Regulus decides that he will try out for Seeker, and turns towards a display of racing brooms. It is the sensible thing; more suitable to his abilities now and when projected into the future. And ultimately, if he’s going to rub a win in any of his brother’s red-clad friends then he’s going to do it from the most glorified position in the entire game.

He makes his decision, they meet Mother for lunch at a favored café after they make the purchase, and then Father drops him back off at school with a reassuring hand on his shoulders and a word of caution to be good.

 

 

Evan Rosier misses the Quidditch tryouts due to a nasty case of wizarding influenza. There’s not much the matron can prescribe him besides some potions to soothe the symptoms, plenty of bed-rest, and plenty of fluids, and so Evan, the most excited about Quidditch tryouts, spends a miserable week in bed. A part of Regulus feels terrible for his best friend when he trudges back into the dorms at the end of three grueling days of tryouts, but it’s eclipsed by the overwhelming feeling of elation at having snatched the Seeker position from underneath a fourth year’s nose. Evan, sunny and supportive now that he’s on the rebound from his illness, gives him a sincere congratulation, but Regulus does not miss the way the other boy’s shoulder sag in defeat when he quietly tells him who this year’s Chasers are. None of them are second years like them, but it still stings that Evan never even had the chance to stand on the pitch and put himself out there for consideration.

To maintain a serious flying regimen of some sorts, Evan joins the recreational flying club. It sounds great, in theory. In reality, it’s filled with guys hoping to impress their beaus through passably smooth romantic evening joyrides, with only a scattering of tryout dropouts hoping to practice enough to edge themselves into the reserve team the following year. Evan greatly exaggerates his woes to be surrounded by so many canoodling couples, but Regulus is sympathetic. It sounds, quite frankly, absolutely terrible.

“You’re not letting it get to you though, are you?” Regulus asks one evening, as he’s trying to pick out the best potato out of a tray of roast tatties. He levels a glare at Jenkinson with the other boy spears the one he had his eye on, and painstakingly starts the process all over again. Evan is worryingly quiet, rolling a sausage around on his plate and mixing up his peas and mash. “Ev?” He spears a potato and cuts it neatly down the middle with his knife.

“I guess,” his best friend says glumly. He nudges the gravy pot towards Regulus, who makes a soft sound of thanks before drizzling a perfect little pool between the two halves of his potato. “It’s just… I’ve gotta practice my tosses because I _really_ want to be Chaser, yeah? But they’re literally everywhere, these romantic prats, and I can’t hit any of them because I can’t risk extra detention. I’m getting maybe a fourth of the reserve team’s practice at this rate.” He lets out a frustrated sigh, mashing a pea with the back of his fork.

“Why don’t you treat them like oversized bludgers?” Regulus asks mildly. “Or maybe really stupid Beaters. Practice on your dodging skills while you hold the Quaffle. Chasers are the only ones capable of holding the Quaffle for any extended period of time, so you might as well make the most out of it.” He just really wants Evan to stop looking so glum; it’s a terrible look on his normally jovial face.

The corner of Evan’s lip twitches up. “Imagine they’re all Black the older?” he asks, and even though both of them know that Sirius is an infuriatingly good Beater, it makes for a good mental image to imagine themselves running loops around the other boy while he’s busy pursuing some dead-end romance or other. Regulus nods, even as his fork clatters against the roast tattie platter and he hisses out a quietly furious _“Jenkinson.”_

Evan grabs a tray of pudding and pulls it closer to them, taking a generous spoonful and dropping first one then another onto his and Regulus’s plates. Regulus makes a sound not unlike a dying cat at having his perfectly organized plate ruined, and he’s suitably distracted enough to let Jenkinson take the rest of the potatoes. “How could you?” Regulus gripes, “I give you advice and you repay me with _this_!”

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Evan says loftily, shoving the savory portions of his plate to one side before digging into his pudding. “You like apple trifle. Imagine if I had pulled the jellies over.” A look of extraordinary disgust flits across Regulus’s face, and he puts his fork down with a little more force than absolutely necessary before grabbing his spoon.

“See if I offer you a chaser’s match,” he mutters grumpily, shoving a spoonful of trifle into his mouth. The stewed apples practically melt in his mouth and it’s the perfect level of sweet, but he has to keep up appearances. “I rescind any offer I might have made to help you become the best Chaser our team will ever have.”

“No you don’t,” Evan says confidently. Regulus hates how he’s totally right. He also hates how Evan keeps giving him self-assured smirks over his own spoonfuls of trifle, and he especially hates how he pulls his Seeker card later to get them access to an empty corner of the pitch so that they can play a pick-up chaser’s match. Evan’s never going to be as fast as him, but as a Chaser he needs to be just as agile, and so they bobble along on school brooms while they throw an imitation Quaffle around before everything rapidly devolves into trying to knock each other off of their brooms. They only return to the ground when Madame Hooch marches out to yell at them about curfew, but there’s a bounce in Evan’s step as they head back to the dungeons that had been missing the past couple weeks and Regulus is happily windblown without the deep-seated ache that always came after an actual practice.

“If we keep this up you’ll totally make the team next year,” Regulus says later, when they’re tucked into bed with only the curtains closest to each other open. “I don’t know why Bole’s not on the reserve team, really. You fly better than him already so it should be easy to replace him.”

“Let’s not jinx me, yeah?” Evan mumbles sleepily.

“Sure,” Regulus says easily, “but I stand by everything I say.” Evan huffs out a laugh and a thanks, all bundled up in one, and then shuts his curtain with a murmured good night. For the longest time, Regulus stares at the pieces of silver embroidery he can see from the faint lighting filtering through the windows. Already, he can see them: as third years at the new tryouts; at the first practice, standing proud with their new brooms; facing off Gryffindor in their first game together where their Chaser-Seeker combination is a hundred times better than his brother’s and Potter’s Beater-Chaser combination can ever hope to be.

It’s a good thought, he thinks. Sensible, because Evan really is a great flyer and will make an amazing Chaser. And ultimately, there’s no better way to rub a win in his brother’s and his brother’s best friend’s face than if he did it with his own best friend.

Pleased, he lets down his own curtain, and falls asleep with a smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Give me happier childhood days where everyone's biggest worries were making the school sports team and getting your crush to like you back and writing your homework the period before it was due. I'm here for the everyday teenage lives of my favorite Slytherin squad. Welcome to the snake pit come yell with me about what was and could have been.


End file.
